Gee, you're older than I thought. Guess addressing letters to you as "Dear Whippersnapper" is out.

Did you read Commissioner Cretin's musings about the Wild Card? What a dolt.

There's just one fair way to make it harder for the wild card to win, and that's not to have one. Then, of course, it would seem unfair for crappy teams from weak divisions to be in the playoffs when stronger second place teams are sitting at home. Why, for example, does Bud think it would be fairer to put extra impediments on the 2005 Sox, who tied with the Yankees and got designated as a "wild card" because of the stupid and very un-baseball-like tie-breaker rules? If the 2004 Red Sox began Game #1 with a 2-0 deficit (that's one of the stupid suggestions), would it have changed the outcome? No.

By its very nature, it's unfair for the team that won a division to have to play the wild card from its own division, but that's the trade-off baseball made to have lots of teams in contention and an extra layer of play-offs. So live with it, Bud...it was your baby in the first place. Stop the whining. Besides, sometimes the Wild Card really is the best team...the Tigers are, and the the 2004 Red Sox were.

(By the way, there's a rumor that Jason Johnson will start Game 6 for the Mets...)

I tried to find a picture of Eck's back in his red Sox uniform, but came up empty. I found a big home plate wall display that holds 43 baseballs, but the license plate was too good to pass up (and yes, I did look for Canadian plates, and Vermont, too).

I still laugh at the comment I got more than a year ago, from someone ragging on me and saying I must be a clueless, ignorant college student.

...

If Selig says something will "improve" the game, you can bet your entire annual salary it'll only fuck it up.

I don't like the wild card and would like to restructure the leagues and eliminate it, but as the divisions now stand, the system is not broken.

Selig must not like the MFY always losing to the wild card team. But in many cases, the wild card team has a better record than one of the division winners. A SoSHer went back and added them up; maybe I'll post that later.

... Hey, has LaRussa pissed and moaned about the room service food at his New York hotel?

When Bud takes credit for the WC, I'm not sure what he's taking credit for. Dividing each league into 3 Divisions, or figuring out how to get a 4th team into the playoffs (er,post season)? The latter is just the logical result of the former, unless he wants a bye team (lets not go there). But penalizing a WC team is lunacy.

Anyway, what Bud really needs to be thinking about is whether the dumbing-down of the game by FOX and ESPN broadcasting crews is doing the game any good. Why is there a need to make commercials imploring your fans to watch a championship series? Bud has to ask the TV lords how many actual examples they have of somebody who has never watched baseball suddenly tuning into a playoff game, sitting there all alone, without even a buddy, to explain stuff to them. I'll wager that there may be new watchers, but they almost certainly are not sitting there solo. There is absolutely no need to have the game dumbed-down. Explain the nuances yes, give us a player's perspective, yes, but don't frigging insult us with the likes of McBuck and Joe Moron, to name just the obvious. You hear the obligatory ballwashing of thanking THE FANS, but has anybody ever asked THE FANS how they want the game presented on TV?

Woti: Boy, when you're right, you're right. But this goes way back before Fox or ESPN, all the way to the day Tony Kubek hung up his lips. Every national game begins with the premise that the viewer has never seen a game in his or her life. That's why watching the Sox in national broadcasts before the 2004 WS drove me nuts...I had to listen to the same mantra about Sox tragedies in October, the Yankees, Bucky Dent, Buckner, Pesky, etc, blah-blah fuck (not to mention the same stories about how strong Jim Rice was, and Wade Boggs' chicken fetish, and the usual crap about Manny). If you didn't know this stuff, you didn't care, and if you did know it, you were sick to death of it.

In Boston, the writers and broadcasters will mention Dick Radatz or Jimmy Piersallor even obscure players like Pumpsie Green and Danny Cater and just assume that the listener knows the team's history. OK, that's a lot to expect of a general audience (or perhaps many other team fan bases), but Fox especially takes the dumbing down it to an extreme...they so simplify the comments that they misrepresent what's going on.

Bad as most of them are, at least the local radio guys assume that you know their team, which is why XM radio has been a godsend. The problem is that there's often a delay, so if I have the TV sound off, the play-by-play is about two pitches behind. Talk about confusing...!

The problem is that there's often a delay, so if I have the TV sound off, the play-by-play is about two pitches behind.

I used to watch games with the TV sound off and the radio broadcast on, and the delay was always a problem. When I watched Yankees game, it was a godsend. You know why.

For Yankees-Red Sox games, Allan couldn't stand the delay - so we watched with the Spanish-language broadcast. (Buenos noches, amigos!)

But WEEI announcers - blech! I can't stand them. They are among the worst radio announcers I've ever heard.

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Woti, what you're saying about TV, dumbing-down, neophytes - it's very true. The national broadcast always has to be more general than the local, but approaching it as if the audience has never seen a baseball game before is ridiculous.

Why is there a need to make commercials imploring your fans to watch a championship series?

Those ads really smack of desperation. Is anyone going to watch a playoff game because Tommy Lasorda tells them to? The stupidest part is you have to be watching already to see the commercials!

Yeah, Eck got his act together...after slopping his way thru what should have been his prime with Sox and contributing mightily to the post-1978 failure of the team to translate a great line-up into any kind of championship. I'm glad Eck turned it around in time to save his career and his life, but he didn't do the Red Sox any favors. One more reason I was glad to see Derek Lowe go: talented players who won't stay sober long enough to play up to their ability are poison.